The origin of the story that someone somewhere said cancer was God’s punishment for Jimmy Carter’s antisemitism is lost in myth. Like any myth there are contradictory popular beliefs in it – God (the one who takes care of Jews and evangelical Christians should punish Carter v. those who believe that the sort of people who think like that would think that.

Why is this not an international disaster? People in Gaza have no reliable supply of potable water. Houses, hospitals lie in ruins. It is the conflict with Israel which frightens international donors – and development agencies.

Israel has welcomed the new Palestinian middle-class city of Rawabi and, belatedly, agreed to connect it to its water supply, a move which will separate Palestine’s new middle class from the mass of water-starved people. Will Rawabi’s better-educated and more ambitious people serve as a leadership for Palestinians or will they turn their back on no-hopers?

This article by Roy Isacowitz continues the debate about whether Israeli governance of Palestinians can properly be described as apartheid. Roy Isacowitz thinks yes. This is illustrated with photos of Israeli police rough-handling children and shouting at women whom they are not allowing through the Qalandia checkpoint. Israel justifies its repressive measures as protecting their security.

First there was the settlement ,Kedumim, built on their land, then the wall, cutting the small town of Kafr Qaddum off from its neighbours; then the IDF cut their water supply then settlers damaged their transmission tower cutting off their electricity supply. As Kafr Qaddum is one of those Palestinian towns which has sustained a defiant protest for 13 years about the loss of its land it is hard to read these attacks as anything but collective punishment – the smallest babe and frailest old person need water and electricity – for the defiance of the young people.

Daniel Birnbaum, the CEO of Sodastream – which isn’t doing too well at the moment – wants us to believe (perhaps he believes it himself) that the boycott of the settlement-produced fizzer was due to antisemitism. Not the brightest bubble in the bottle.

It’s not a tidal wave but is a disturbing ripple: Israeli mayors and parents in several towns are demanding the sacking of teachers who express any criticism of IDF actions. They are deemed unpatriotic and dangerous.

Frightened at the firebombing of the Dawabsheh family last month the Israeli government has set up Hebrew Shepherd, a programme to reform hilltop youth. Too late. These settlers want a new pure Israel with no nods towards democracy.

An unidentified soldier, armed and masked, made a stupid mistake; he chose to pin down an 11-year-old-boy, his arm in a cast, in a headlock, crushing him against a rock. Nothing special here. But it was filmed and this one image of the Occupation has told more people more about the power the IDF exercises – or tries to – over Palestinians than have countless written accounts.

More evidence that younger Palestinians in the West Bank, expressing themselves via social media, are entirely alienated from the corrupt croneyism of Pres. Abbas and his Fatah faction. His attempts to revive Fatah’s relevance may be too late.

A history of Zionism in Britain has much useful information but this particular history, published by CounterPunch, seems to have come from the school of Zionist conspiracies. Evan Jones does not distinguish between how ‘Zionist’ is used today – one who believes Jews alone are destined to rule a greater Israel – and how it was used pre-Israel: one with an aspiration for a Jewish homeland. He also sees Zionists at work in the UK without any evidence, defined purpose or names (or footnotes). Read with discrimination.

This last week of the summer holiday, August 24-August 30, 2015, is a chance for us to post a few of the reports and analyses which are not driven by the news timetable. But first issues where action is required: 1. March and rally on Israel’s date with Welsh football: Stick to fair play: Wales […]

A documentary on what American children learn at Jewish Day Schools reveals a shocking end to the tradition of critical thought from which Jewish intellectuals were created. In its place is indoctrination in love for ‘mother’ Israel and such a one-sided account of Israel that many of the ‘cogs’ in this production line are profoundly shocked when they discover that Israel is a super-power which has tried to get rid of all traces of the Palestinians who lived in the ‘land without people’.

This is an old story – EU plans to outlaw settlement products – and a new story: France and the PA are putting on the pressure for the EU to implement its resolutions against importing settlement products. What’s the hold-up? Contact your MEP!

These photos show Palestinian women and a young girl launching an attack on an armed, masked soldier who is pinning a boy with a broken arm to a rock in the process of arresting him for throwing stones. It is such an everyday story of life in a Palestinian village it would not normally be in the news. But the pictures have ‘gone viral’ because the soldier has to flee from the furious females.

The 67th World Health Assembly requested WHO to report on the health conditions in the oPt. The result is a unique portrait of occupied Palestine told through the eyes of health-care – precarious, poverty-stricken and horribly damaged by Israel’s blockade.

A snobbish discrimination against Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews by the Ashkenazi elite has, from the beginning, been a driving force in Israeli politics. While the Mizrahim in particular might have made common cause with Palestinians most chose instead to prove a pure Jewishness. Fascinating two-part article by Ran Greenstein.

A group of women – Women Wage Peace, set up after the carnage of Operation Protective Edge – began a fast near the PM’s home on the anniversary of the Operation and maintained it in shifts for the 50 days. They were not the usual suspects – which may explain the lack of media coverage – and one participant raises the perennial questions of how to build a political movement.

Israel and Palestine, including Gaza, seem to be frozen in stasis, doomed, if they move, to begin another round of political and military conflict. Many outside agencies have tried to mediate. Kerry blamed Israel obduracy, others blame Hamas. Here the ICG addresses the main actors with proposals on what each can do to move out of the conflict zone. Giving Hamas more control over its income and recognition of Palestine as a state by all EU cpountries would help .

Having decided to lead the world (viz. the USA) in a crusade against Iran, PM Netanyahu has had to cast his decision in the most hyperbolic terms – good v. evil, for Israel or for another holocaust of Jews? Only Israelis are listening.